This absorbing study of early 20th Century American Culture interprets the anarchic absurdity of slapstick movies as a form of collective anxiety dream, their fantastical images and illogical gags expressing the unconscious wishes and fears of the modern age, in a way that foreshadows the concerns of our own celebrity-obsessed consumer culture.

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Authors and Affiliations

Swansea University, Swansea, UK

Alan Bilton

About the author

Alan Bilton is Lecturer in English and American Studies at Swansea University, UK. He is author of An Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction (EUP, 2002), editor of America in the 1920s: Literacy Sources and Documents, Volume One: The Cultural Condition, Volume Two: Voices of Modernity and Volume Three: An Age of Performance (with Philip Melling, Helm Information, 2004), and he has published articles in international journals such as the European Journal of American Studies, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review and The Journal of American Studies.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Silent Film Comedy and American Culture
Authors: Alan Bilton
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137020253
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-02024-6Published: 14 May 2013
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-43747-4Published: 01 January 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-02025-3Published: 14 May 2013
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 244
Topics: Cultural Studies, Screen Studies, Film History, Performing Arts, American Culture, Regional and Cultural Studies

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

Front Matter

Back Matter

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